HIS WORKS. Ixvii 



Columbus ? Not in possession of more numerous facts than 

 their contemporaries, but endowed with nobler and more 

 vigorous intellects, the one developed the intricate system of 

 the heavenly bodies and the other discovered an unheard-of 

 continent. Was it not in the same way, by the exertion of 

 superior intellect, that Harvey made his immortal discovery ? 

 I know not what has happened in the world unseen; but if 

 I may judge from the records of history and the annals of 

 fame, the spirit of Bacon, the spirits of Columbus, Copernicus 

 and Newton have not been ashamed to welcome and associate 

 with the congenial spirit of Harvey." To this fine passage 

 there is little to be added: Harvey's discovery was of the 

 rational and inductive and therefore higher class, according to 

 our estimate ; it was made in virtue of the intellectual powers 

 which peculiarly distinguish man, possessed in a state of the 

 highest perfection. 



THE WORK ON GENERATION. 



In our account of Harvey's public career we found him 

 busy with the subject of Generation at Oxford in 1642 ; but he 

 had certainly turned his attention that way at a much earlier 

 period, for one of the chief causes of his regret, as expressed 

 to Dr. Ent, for the destruction of his papers during the civil 

 war, is the loss of his Observations on the Generation of Insects, 

 which could only have been made and reduced to form many 

 years previously, probably before his engagement to accompany 

 the Duke of Lennox on his travels. And then we see that 

 all his notes on the gestation of the hind or doe were made 

 in the palmy days of the first Charles, before the differences 

 between him and the people of these countries had come to 

 the arbitrement of arms. Harvey probably occupied a good 

 deal of his leisure in arranging and writing the work on Gene- 

 ration, after quitting the service of Charles in 1646 ; his practice 



